1035 hours


A sheet of leathery dark cloth was thrown straight at his face as soon as he entered Yavin's office, and, spluttering, Virgil pulled it off to look at the cloak in confusion. He had been called in after a solid week of trying to ignore the Department Head - an effort that earned some snark from those Unspeakables who teased him for being an insufferable teacher's pet. The pointed jokes hadn't been a problem. After what happened between them last Monday[1] night, he was grappling with a different kind of hurt.

When you come to trust and rely on somebody over a course of years, it was painful not to see them.

Yavin was one of few people who understood him almost completely. There were things the older wizard knew, things he never judged, and wasn't that what everyone wanted? Not to be judged for their worse thoughts and desires?

"What is this for?" he slowly slipped on the cloak, watching as Yavin wore his own over the usual uniform of a brightly coloured jumper. "Are we going somewhere?" The older wizard was standing behind his desk and right next to the three arched windows that exhibited their everyday landscapes[2].  As accustomed as they all were to these strange portals, he didn't know any Unspeakables who spoke about actually going through them. But sometimes he would catch the department head returning from a trip.

            "We're going for a, aha, for a walk." Yavin buttoned up and removed his spectacles.

Virgil followed his gaze to the centre window, blinking as strikes of lightning lit up a stormy sky behind the lone lighthouse. It was a spindly looking structure posed on the very edge of a cliff, and its lantern threw beams across the tempestuous sea.

1.	16th Jan - It Scares Me Half to Death
2.	Morgenthau's Office - "... three separate Victorian windows overlooked surreal sights: a lighthouse on the very edge of a dark cliff thrust into evening fog, the vista of a stark rust coloured desert, a narrow alleyway lit under starlight."

Yavin Morgenthau lifted a leg over the stone window sill and dropped down a good four feet on to the soggy untrodden ground of the stormy cliffside. He quickly moved aside so that the young man could land behind him - a little wobbly on his feet, arms held out for balance. Rain fell on them like a heavy sheet and the two wizards pulled their hoods over their heads right away, glancing at each other. They stood at the perimeter of an ancient ruin along the cliff; once, perhaps, a church. Now it was nothing but crumbling walls and doors that lead nowhere.

Virgil glanced up through the window they had entered from.: it, too, appeared to lead nowhere. "Don't worry," Yavin reassured him distractedly as he turned to trudge his way towards the lighthouse in the distance. "It'll take us right, um, right back to nine. Come on."

The ground rose up before them, leading up to the craggy plateau where the tower went about its solitary business of bringing ships safe home to harbour. If there was a harbour nearby, it was not visible in the storm. "Where are we?" cried Virgil, catching up, arms crossed over his narrow chest. "Or is it when?"

"Somewhere, some time," the older man laughed, snatches of his voice lost in the wind. "I, hm, I wanted somewhere to talk to you. Somewhere open and private..." he paused to catch his breath as the earth levelled out somewhat. Yavin looked at his protege, dark eyes full of concern - but also of contrition.

He, too,  had felt the hurt of being avoided. "I want to apologise. For how I reacted to you last, uh, last week." They continued to climb up, and reached the weathered decking that surrounded the foot of the lighthouse.

           "I understand," Virgil's tone was stiff, purposeful, and it carried the tremor of a shiver. It was cold here. "You were right to be angry."

Yavin motioned for him to open the door before them. It was heavyset and made of steel, its red paint peeling. When it was shut behind them, it shut out the sound of thunder and rain as well - only the slightest background noise penetrated the whitewashed walls, like listening to a gale in the province over. Water dripped off their cloaks.

A single winding stairwell led straight to the top of the tower. Here, however, there was nothing but a lit cast iron stove, a couple of wooden chairs, and a broomstick. He pulled down his hood, taking one of the chairs.

"I wasn't right." Yavin leaned back and reached into his pocket for his smoking pipe. "And you, hm, you know it. Don't be obtuse. We're better than that, you and I."

Virgil swallowed as he took the other chair. His pale blue eyes lifted to follow the stairs. Up there, somebody swung around the heavy lantern so that it cut across the sea in a different direction. Looking back down at his mentor, he spoke softly and with an effete gesture of the hand:"Alright. Apologise then."

Yav paused to light his pipe. A couple of puffs later, with a crack of muffled thunder above them, he continued. "I'm sorry, Virgil. Will you, ah, will you forgive me?"

They have argued before. Loads of times, especially at the beginning of their acquaintance. Virgil had known Yavin since he was seven[1] and they had, to his embarrassment, been through a great many screaming matches over the summer holidays of his first few years at Hogwarts. Which was to say, Virgil screamed and Yavin spoke in terse but gentle tones until they were both more or less on the same level of emotional vehemence.

Over the years, when they drifted apart, it had been easy to forget about the arguments. Easy to forget about the older wizard altogether - Hogwarts had taken over like a wildfire. Learning new things could do that to you.Still, Yavin was always there, in a letter or in the Stardust audience, the gentlest of reminders.

"Of course I forgive you," Virgil muttered, eyeing the pipe and patting down his own pockets under the cloak until he found his cigarette case. "You didn't mean it, you just thought I was being reckless," he lit his cigarette efficiently, tapping off the embers of the initial drag. "And I was, wasn't I? I'm such a fucking imbecile."

1.	July 1999 - Stick Up for Yourself Son

Yavin stuck out a long leg, kicking him lightly in the shins. "Don't, hm, don't talk about yourself that way."

It was difficult, reminding people that they should be kinder to themselves. The instinct to judge your own actions more critically than you would dare to judge another person, it was so innately human. Harmful, too. He found it often in depressed individuals and in the psychologically traumatised. Virgil was the former but he was usually better about these things. They had been going over it since he was a child, after all.

"I need you to help, mm, to help me understand what's going on with you." Yav pointed his mouthpiece at the blonde, chair creaking as he leaned back in it. "We don't, ah, we don't look into each other's minds. I respect that rule. So your, um, your actions in these past few months... they've been confusing me."

When did it start? Spiking chocolates from two? Volunteering for the death chamber? Vampire bites in Camden? Was it the werewolf vision, the drugs? Virgil licked his lips, studying his fingernails with unnatural interest. "Nothing's going on. I've been bored. There has to be something interesting for me to do."

Deflection, weak. "You want more work? Do you want, hm, want different work?" Yavin played along and leaned forward with pipe in hand, earnest. "Or do you want off?" he added sharply - his secret suspicion, that Mysteries was getting to be too much for the kid. "Off nine, I mean."

           "Maybe.

"All you have to do, is, ah, is to say. I can arrange it." It was infuriating for him, when the answer to all his question was simply to step inside somebody's mind - not that he did this often but he was not so pious to believe the temptation obsolete. "Is it or is it not what you want? You, hm, you have to talk to me Virgil."

Talk to him.

With their legs dangling high above London town, he and Nemo[1] had talked some. Talked about vampires, vanities, what drew them to danger. They didn't turn up any answers so he wasn't sure if this was something that even had an answer.

"Damaged individuals may exhibit extreme behaviour in stressful situations," Virgil was staring at the stove, while somewhere above them lightning flashed in the glass walls of the lighthouse crown, "and it's important to monitor oneself for the precursors of these outbursts."

           "My words," Yavin confirmed the recitation, and he could feel those dark eyes watching. "But you've been very, that is, very good about coping, I think. We've worked on this for, hm, for years. Should I be worried?"

"No," a languid, heated sigh escaped him and Virgil crossed his legs as he looked up. "No, that's the problem. I want to do dangerous things, Yavin. I want... I want to get really drunk and walk home alone on a quiet street. I want to go out clubbing and go home with a stranger, several strangers. I want to wake up in a flat I don't recognise, with marks I don't remember getting. I want to... I want to do what other people do, without worrying. Without monitoring myself."

Virgil hissed, his cigarette had burned all the way down to the butt and burnt him. He reached for the stove door and threw it in, gingerly. "I hate that I'm always careful," his gaze flicked to the other man, tense and almost pleading. "Why can't I throw caution into the wind? What's wrong with that?"

1.	20th Jan - A Thinking Place

This wasn't the kind of conversation they could have had at the Ministry - maybe not even in his home, or Virgil's home, or in sacred Stardust Theatre. Yavin was glad he brought them here to talk. Where there is thunder, it felt safer to say out loud the things you caution yourself against in real life. Even so it was hard to listen to what was being said - the implication of it.

Because he could imagine, quite clearly, what it meant for Virgil to always be careful. To always hesitate before accepting another drink, rolling another joint, talking to a stranger at a bar whose thoughts are the brink of something dark or violent. To want to be young and carefree and desired.

"There's nothing wrong with that," he brushed his thumb over the well of his smoking pipe. "Logic and sermons never convince... the damp of the night drives deeper into my soul. That's Walt Whitman. Song of Myself."

Yavin's countenance was soft and not a little sad. "I think of you when I, um, when I read Whitman. You try so hard to be logical," his thin mouth twisted into a pained smile, "but you, hm, you feel too much to be as logical as you aspire."

           Virgil narrowed his gaze, folding himself on to the chair with the loose tension of an origami crane. "What are you trying to say?"

"I won't ever be, ah, be the person who tells you to throw caution to the wind," he spoke slowly now, carefully, like a balancing act, "but I can't assume to live your life for you." Yavin tapped the ashes out of his pipe, returning it into the folds of his cloak. "Just know that, um, if anything should happen, I am here the way I was when you were bitten in December. Just a thought away. A dream."

His chest felt tight, anxious, and he was trying very hard not to let it show in the way he looked at Virgil now. "Remember, you have friends..." he raised his eyebrows as he stood. "They are, um, are as willing to help you as you have been to help them. And you are always willing."

Virgil got up, realising with a prick of disappointment that their talk was drawing to its end. He looked up one last time - catching a glimpse of someone moving past the stairwell landing above. The lantern swung again, creaking loudly, echoing all the way down to them.

"Who is it, Yav?" he asked, brow wrinkled with worry and curiousity. "What kind of person mans a lighthouse?"

Yavin Morgenthau pulled up his hood and shrugged, reaching for the door. "The kind of person who's lived more than their share of a lifetime" he replied lightly as he turned the handle. "And must atone for old sins. Let's, hah, let's go then, sleepy boy. We're here on the clock."

And sleepy boy followed him out into the stormy night.